Shakabuku

Debi: You know what you need?
Marty: What?
Debi: Shakabuku.
Marty: You wanna tell me what that means?
Debi: It's a swift, spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever.
Marty: Oh, that'd be good. I think.

This is from my favorite movie ever, Grosse Pointe Blank. It came to mind while pondering this depression that has set in upon me. It rolled in like a wave as I was leaving work last night, and it was all I could do to keep from just breaking down into tears. Nothing in particular and everything was making me sad, both bad and good.

I've never felt the sadness of Christmas before. I've read about it, and I know it's a very real phenomenon for many people. What should be the most joyous of times for people is anything but a chance of seeing any bright side of life; that's why the suicide rate climbs during Christmas-time. For the first time, though, I can sense that deep sense of being on the dark side. Not the hopelessness, but just the awareness that things aren't what they should be, or at least not what I wanted them to be. Which is fueled by my own sense of inadequacy, worthlessness, and irrelevance. It's a twisted mess and self-fueling quagmire.

I have to remind myself that I have friends who love me, my parents love me, that I haven't destroyed my life with all of my bad decisions, that God loves me and has a future and a hope for me, that Jesus Christ gave His very life so that I might live eternally with Him, and that my current circumstances are not the totality of my existence.

But one day, it would be really nice to not have to remind myself of these things, that they are just a part of my life naturally.